Directional emphasis in ambisonics
This is an incremental improvement for audio processing applications using ambisonics, such as virtual reality or spatial audio systems.
The paper tackles the problem of low-degree ambisonics representations causing distortion and weak signal strength in specific directions by introducing a low-computational-cost enhancement method that upscales to higher-degree representations, resulting in sharpened directionality and reduced timbre distortion.
We describe an ambisonics enhancement method that increases the signal strength in specified directions at low computational cost. The method can be used in a static setup to emphasize the signal arriving from a particular direction or set of directions. It can also be used in an adaptive arrangement where it sharpens directionality and reduces the distortion in timbre associated with low-degree ambisonics representations. The emphasis operator has very low computational complexity and can be applied to time-domain as well as time-frequency ambisonics representations. The operator upscales a low-degree ambisonics representation to a higher degree representation.